Tribune of the People

by Dan Wallace

  Sextus grabbed a waterskin from an orderly and silently slipped down the slope from the camp to a line of tall evergreens. He slung the plump bag over his shoulder and proceeded to climb a tree, easily rising hand over hand to a limb with an unobstructed view of the surrounding area. He could see the lake in the distance, and farther on, low forests that began at the edge of the fields and pastures dotting the landscape. Tiberius would emerge from those woods, Sextus figured.

  As he watched, he noticed campfires near the lake, and wondered if Tiberius had arrived first. Immediately, he realized that the quaestor would never encamp while his small force was divided. The fires must be for locals, and he wondered if they fished there, or trolled for freshwater shellfish. Seemed like a lot of campfires though, he thought, many of them concentrated at the southern end, a good number of miles from Vulsinii. He decided to scout them tomorrow. Right now, the sun was setting, which made it harder to see anything. With a grunt, he climbed down from the tree.

  “Send out some men before dawn tomorrow to scout the campfires below,” he said to Decimus, his first decurion when he arrived back in camp at dusk. Lysis handed him a cold goat shank and a cup of vinegary wine, and gestured to a rough resting place next to a fallen tree trunk. Sextus threw himself down against it and began to eat and drink. He paused, and said, “Did you eat?”

  Lysis nodded his head.

  “Good. Go to bed. We don’t know what tomorrow will bring, so it’s wise to save our strength tonight.”

  Lysis slipped to the ground and pulled his bedclothes around him. Sextus glanced at him, then continued eating and drinking. He gazed about at the muffled figures of soldiers in their sleep and the silhouettes of guards melded to the trees, and felt content, as content as he could feel, anyway. This hardly compared to lounging at home on a plush couch, alternating sweet figs with fresh bread dipped in warmed olive oil and sampling the most exquisite of roasted cuts. Repasts rivaling the ambrosia of the gods, he reminisced, complemented with wine like nectar. That was the life, he thought, as he drifted off propped up against the fallen trunk.

  Tiberius and his cohort emerged from the woods north of the lake near Vulsinii with only another handful of recruits. Weary and long-faced, he ordered his men to form up even as Sextus thundered up with a small troop of riders behind him.

  “Salve, Quaestor!” he shouted, saluting.

  “Hello, Sextus,” Tiberius said wearily.

  Sextus slipped off of his horse in a fluid motion. “I’ve just come from Vulsinii.”

  “And?”

  “They’ve barricaded the city and stand armed on the walls.”

  “God of lightning! Are they mad?”

  “Clearly, they are.”

  “Orcus have them. Lysis! Bring me Chance!”

  They arrived at the gates of Vulsinii, which sat on the saddle between the hills and the rise of the mountains. A town really, rather than a city, it was walled with ancient tufa stones topped by more recently placed bricks and mortar. Fearfully, the Vulsinii militia peered down from the narrow embrasures at the Roman contingent standing before the gates. Tiberius roared.

  “Praetor, do you wish us to raze your town and sell your women and children into slavery? You and your brave citizen soldiers will be dead, of course. Is that what you want?”

  The praetor of Vulsinii stuttered, “No, Quaestor, no. We are loyal to Rome, and we do not defy you.”

  “Then, what is this?”

  “With abject respect, Quaestor, we have no more young soldiers to send to Hispania. Those we sent with Caepio never returned. The harvest was hard in those years, and harder still on the mothers of our lost Vulsinii boys. We cannot send more, and if we must die, we will all die together at home, not in some strange, cold land.”

  Tiberius sat back. Chance rumbled a sneeze, and Tiberius leaned forward.

  “Praetor ... what is your name?”

  “Julius Paulus Clavicus, your honor.”

  “Praetor Paulus Clavicus,” Tiberius said, “you are an honorable man, and a brave man. But what am I to do? I need a legion to take to Hispania to fight this righteous war against the impudent Numantines, as my father did before me. Vulsinii is an ally of Rome, and subject to the laws that require allies to provide troops in the Republic’s defense. I need legionaries, Clavicus. What am I to do?”

  The praetor, a small, skinny man who appeared to Tiberius as someone who might make his living selling wine pots, shivered before him. Then, the pot-seller, or maybe linen merchant, stiffened and stood taller than his actual height.

  “We have sent enough boys far away to die. We have no more to spare. Go to the lake and take their young men to fight Rome’s wars. They have nothing to lose, and there are as many of them as birds in the air.”

  Tiberius gazed up at the insolent man, whose near bitterness in his declaration surely would bring Rome’s wrath down upon his town. All around him, though, the citizen soldiers didn’t flinch at their magistrate’s defiant statement.

  “I can bring up the troops, and we can have the town in a couple of hours,” Casca said.

  Tiberius scratched his eye beneath his gaudy bronze helmet. “And how is that? We have no siege weapons and only a cohort. Seeing that, they might sally from the city and chase us back to Rome.”

  “Doubtful, sir. They won’t stand up to seasoned soldiers from the Fifth. I could have ladders made in an hour, and we could sweep the walls in two.”

  Tiberius said, “Perhaps, but even if we could bring them down, what good will that do us? We can destroy the town, but only at the cost of killing all the recruits that we need.”

  “True,” Casca said, “though we’ll be richer for it from the slaves and goods. It’s within your rights.”

  Tiberius looked at Casca almost condescendingly, even though he knew better than to underestimate his centurion primus. “Casca, how do you think Rome will feel about our conquest of an ally like this, when we haven’t even left Italia?”

  Casca shrugged. “It’s up to you, Quaestor, but no matter what you do, Rome will find a way to fault you for it.”

  Tiberius laughed, “True enough.”

  He turned back to the Vulsinii praetor and his soldiers, all who seemed to have sagged somewhat just in the past few moments from the tension of waiting for the inevitable. Tiberius squinted, then said to Casca, “Do you see those soldiers on the walls? How do they look to you?”

  Casca raised his eyes to the walls, then said, “Old men, and a few boys. There are no young soldiers of military age on that wall.”

  “Exactly. Casca, I think Paulus is telling the truth. They don’t have any young men left to recruit.”

  “Can you be sure, sir? This might be a ruse, hiding the young warriors to make us think that their cupboards are bare.”

  “Perhaps,” Tiberius said, shaking his head, “But really, how many do you think they have up there, in the wake of Caepio’s predations? This is a desperate act of despair, and they fully expect us to crush them. The Vulsinii people know that they can’t win in any way, yet, there they are.”

  Casca didn’t respond as he tried to think of an alternative course.

  Tiberius thought some more, then called up to Paulus.

  “Why should we go to the lake, Paulus, so that you can run into the hills? That won’t work. My eques has our auxiliaries stationed in the foothills to intercept any who try to escape. What could I possibly find at the lake that will save Vulsinii, Paulus?”

  “The pedites!” cried Paulus, “hundreds of them, thousands. Allies of Rome who have no place to go, nothing to eat. We had to turn them away, too, because we have only enough for ourselves. They’re at the lake, on their way to Rome to find new lives or death, whichever comes first. You’ll find all the recruits that you need there, Quaestor. Go to the lake.”

  “The pedites? The lake?”

  Paulus pulled himself straight up again and raised his voice in stentorian style. “You can kill us all, Roman quaestor, and still march
for Hispania without your legion. It doesn’t matter to us, we are ready to die either way.”

  Tiberius tightened his mouth. Impudent Etrurian. He thought about sending Casca for the cohort after all, to knock the stiffness out of that little factotum’s spinal column.

  “Shall I call up the lads, sir?”

  Tiberius sighed, exasperated. “No, Casca, do not call up the lads.”

  He shouted to the praetor. “Paulus, I’m leaving, now. But I promise you, if I find nothing of interest at the lake, I will bring down Vulsinii. And before I have you crucified, you will watch your wife and daughters raped, then sold into slavery if they survive.”

  Paulus himself sighed, and said, almost inaudibly, “May the gods be with you, Quaestor.”

  Tiberius wheeled Chance around, confused by how this officious little man could make him feel almost powerless. He sped off toward the camp, growling at Casca.

  “Prepare the men to move silently tonight. I want a cordon around the campfires at the south end of the lake so that no one can escape. One or one hundred, I want to be sure that we confront everyone who is there.”

  “It is done, Quaestor.”

  The cohort swept down on the campsite without incident. They met no guards, not even one soul tending a fire. Instead, smoldering embers trickled smoke up into the lightening sky as bodies slowly stirred from the prodding of the legionaries’s pila shafts. Dazed men, women, and children stumbled out from under lean-tos, makeshift tents, and cloaks pulled over them.

  The soldiers herded them together into a group, several hundred of them. Tiberius looked on, puzzled by their lethargy. Rather than act fearfully, most of them stood with their eyes lowered, as if indifferent to their fates.

  Tiberius noted them shivering on this cold, spring morning in thin shifts and cloaks. The youngest children cried out, their noses runny with green mucus, their faces an unnatural ruddy shade from fever.

  “These people are starving, Casca,” murmured Tiberius.

  “Yessir, they look to be so. Weather’s not doing them any good, either.”

  “No,” replied Tiberius thoughtfully. He studied them for a time, watching as some of them simply sat down and refused to rise, no matter how much the legionaries goaded them.

  “Didius, hold the men back,” Casca called out.

  “Yes, Primus,” said the wolfish centurion. He bellowed an order, and the soldiers stepped back, though still at the ready with their short spears.

  Tiberius sat up in his horse, and in a raised voice, called out, “Is there a headsman among you? Anyone to speak for you?”

  The people in front of him milled about, some searching behind them and around, until a tall man with a staff walked to the front. He, too, was thin, though the long muscles of his arms and his thick calves evidenced a full life of labor. A veteran, Tiberius assessed, old, maybe even fifty, yet kept lean by working his plot of land. Tiberius nodded to Casca.

  “Who are you, soldier?” Casca said, “What legion?”

  “Sacerdus Quarto, Centurion Primus, Cohort Praetoria, Fourth Legion, Emeritus.”

  “The Fourth, eh, and a centurion primus. Who was your general, Centurion?”

  “Quintus Opimius.”

  “Master of the Oxybii Ligurians,” said Tiberius, “Well done, Centurion. So, why do we find you now on the side of the road instead of at home cozy in your bed?”

  The tall man leaned on his staff and spit. “What home? What bed?”

  Slightly taken aback, Tiberius said, “Fallen on hard times, have you, Primus? A bad toss of the dice?”

  Quarto looked to spit again but held back. “My pardon, Quaestor, but do I look like someone who plays out his life, his honor, with a toss of the dice?”

  Tiberius and Casca remained silent for a time, taking in Quarto’s bitter defiance. He glared at them, his black pupils shining.

  “No,” Tiberius said quietly, “you don’t.”

  He gestured to Lysis, who ran forward with a wineskin and a bag of bread and fruit. Quarto solemnly shook his head, no.

  Tiberius flicked his head, and Lysis retreated.

  “So, what happened?”

  “What happened? The same as with all of these people here, Rome’s allies, mind you. My land―all of our land―was taken from us by fat cat patricians and their wormy lawyers.”

  “Careful, Centurion,” said Casca, and Tiberius frowned at him. He turned his attention back to Quarto, and said, “I don’t understand, Quarto. Your land was allotted to you for your service, is that not correct? From the public lands.”

  Quarto nodded, “I received my forty iguiera, all right, not more than fifty miles north of here. Good land, where me and my woman could put in a vegetable patch and some grain for the beasts, a few dates and olive trees. We lived well, if not high on the hog. Hard work, but our kids grew, we were content. Until the magistrate showed up, telling us that there was a superseding claim to our land. I told him he was wrong, but he showed me paper. I can’t read, neither can the woman. He said we needed to move off. I told him to kiss off. After he left, I went to the crawl space to find my sword and sharpen it.

  “The magistrate returned with a bunch of bully boys, used to knocking poor peasant farmers about, not a centurion primus last blooded outside Massalia. I flicked open a couple of legs, and they left. A few days later, I woke up to our date trees cut down at the base, same with the olives. The pigs were dead, even the litter. So was the donkey and the milk cow, skulls crushed, throats cut. The birds were all dead, poisoned, I think. A burnt torch had been stuck in the ground in front of our home.

  “I went into the village looking for the magistrate, who was nowhere to be found. I went back home and barred the door. At night, I hunted, slept days. We didn’t have much to eat. A fortnight later, mounted troops arrived at Sol’s rising, the magistrate thick in the middle. He read a dictum that told me I was trespassing, the men dismounted and started toward me with swords out, twenty of them. I backed away, my woman and the kids behind me, until we were out on the road. Three months ago.

  “Others here have walked the road longer, many of them and theirs have died since. We’ll die, too, soon enough, since there’s not much left to forage in the countryside. The new patriarchs of our land keep close guard on their vineyards and olive groves, and they’re out looking to kill poachers. After wandering up and down the Vias, we set camp here by the lake. At least we have water, though the Vulsinii have warned us not to fish.”

  Quarto shrugged his shoulders, “We do, anyway, but don’t get much, not enough for a real meal. Just something to keep us going, for what, we don’t know.”

  He fell quiet, resting on his staff, looking down at the ground.

  Tiberius felt paralyzed. He could feel Casca’s and Didius’s eyes on him, and those of the starving crowd around him, hopeless as they stared at him. Roman citizens and allies, he thought, thrown out of their houses and left to starve or to be cut down like barbarian rebels. This was worse, he realized, than what he had seen at Carthage under Scipio. At least those victims had met a quick end to their misery. But this was torture, Tiberius thought, his mind blackened by the sight in front of his eyes. As a youth, he’d thought he never would see such an order of cruelty as the deaths meted out to the Carthaginians, men, women, children. He hated Scipio for it. Now, he witnessed an even more insidious, more despicable form of conquest and murder. For what? Extravagant estates farmed for profits, food taken out of the mouths of their own people to be turned into coin by slave labor, the rich getting richer. The greed! Rufus, and his gang of “Good Men.” Scipio.

  “Quaestor Gracchus?” Casca said softly.

  Tiberius refocused, glanced at Casca, then back at Quarto.

  “How many are there of you, Quarto?”

  Quarto answered, “A thousand more or less, mostly women and children.”

  Juno comfort us, thought Tiberius, a thousand. He looked at them, back and forth. Mostly women and children, sick from hunger and the cold. A
woman with stringy hair, skin tight against her cheekbones, held a baby close to her chest with one arm while holding on to the hand of a small boy with the other. The boy whined softly what sounded like an endless prayer that had lost its meaning. The bundled baby never moved, and Tiberius wondered if it was still alive.

  He slipped off his horse before Lysis or an orderly could assist him and walked up to Quarto. “Tell your people to build fires. They will eat today.”

  Around the praetorian mess, the centurions ate without their usual boisterous good cheer. Instead, they chewed their bread thoughtfully, sipping at the vinegary wine rather than gulping it as usual. Now and then, Tiberius felt them glancing at him almost surreptitiously. He could imagine what they thought, their commander desperate to raise a legion, falling further behind the appointed time for arriving in Hispania, never mind training on the way. And, they were right, he thought. He was three weeks into the march with a handful of malcontents to show for his trouble, while praetors from two different allied cities defied him. Wait until Rome heard about this, Rufus and his ilk. He was ruined before he’d even left the shadow of Rome’s walls. The humiliation would be total. How could he ever face Claudia, Appius, or his mother?

  His stomach lurched. “Lysis, take my plate. I’m off my feed.”

  The young Greek seamlessly slipped in to take away the plate and utensils.

  Tiberius gazed around at the hard men seated before him, all proven in combat. He wondered if they had second thoughts about him, about the truth of his Mural Crown at Carthage. Maybe they thought that honor had been prearranged by his cousin the consul. He laughed bitterly, of course it had been in its own way, an accident of timing, not courage. Now, here he was, leading a corps of scarred veterans who likely had bets going on how long he’d last. Who had wagered on the shortest time, he wondered? Casca? Didius? Ulpius? Shafat? Had Sextus joined in? Disloyal bastards.